Gnome shutdown dialog timeout cannot be adjusted

If this is a reference to the Fast User Switcher applet, that delay can simply be turned off in the Preferences by deselecting the Confirm dialogues option.

Please make the timer for shutdown and restart customizable, this way everyone is happy.

Yes. Customizable. I agree.

If you're referring to the confirmation dialog for the indicator-session applet, then that's a separate issue unrelated to the gnome-session dialog (and I think that's already reported).

The timeout on the gnome-session dialog will not be changed. The gnome-session dialog is not a confirmation dialog, but is necessary to choose what action you want to perform (ie, whether you want to shutdown, reboot, hibernate etc). How do you expect users to choose the action they want to perform in 2 - 3 seconds?

And what benefit does changing the timeout give you anyway? You will still see the dialog, but it will just disappear quicker. The timeout is there mainly for people who select the action, and then forget to confirm the action and walk away. The timeout ensures that if this happens, appropriate action is taken. You don't actually have to sit around and wait for it to timeout - you'd still have to perform an action to confirm, whatever the timeout was.

I'm referring to the dialog that says 'system will shutdown in 60 seconds', which appears after you've pressed the gnome button to do so, or pressed the powerbutton. This dialog is unnecessary for me, and I just want to be able to make it less than 60 seconds.
The dialog in question does not give users a choice between hibernation or anything, it gives you the choice to cancel the shutdown or confirm it. If you don't touch anything, the system shuts down after 60 seconds.

Well, that's nothing to do with gnome-session. And what benefit would you get by changing the timeout to say, 15 seconds for example anyway? How would that be better/easier for you?

I was going to set it to 0 seconds, actually. There's just no reason for me to have the confirmation box at all.

I'm used to hitting shutdown and then walking away from the computer and let it do its thing. It's also annoying on my laptops because I hit shutdown and then close the lid before the dialog appears, because it takes a couple seconds to show up. And sometimes it goes into suspend instead because it hasn't started the shutdown process when the lid closes.

Most frustrating of all, however, is that I have problems with some ubuntu virtual machines running in Virtualbox that sometimes seize up and refuse to accept keyboard or mouse inputs. I can still send it the shutdown signal through Virtualbox' interface, but then I have to sit and stare at the dialog counting down for a whole minute before the VM can be restarted.

Basically I want it gone/customizable for the same reason I set my GRUB countdown to 1 second as well; in 99.99% of cases I want the default behavior without being nagged.

I wanted to set the timeout to 10 seconds today. It's a shame that it cannot be adjusted. I don't have any issues like the ones Textureglitch has I just think that in a minute I can read the contents of the popup at least 6 times. In addition to that if I call `gnome-session-save --shutdown-dialog' programatically then the popup window wastes for me 50 seconds of battery time.

I hope I don't offend Chris Coulson when I say that it's not the programmer's job to decide how a program should behave, that is the reason the concept of "options" were invented in the first place so please don't try to force your 60 seconds on us; it's bad enough that I have to spend approx. 5 hours a month with Windows computers.

Nobody is forcing 60 seconds on anybody. You don't have to sit there and wait for 60 seconds - you can just click on the shutdown button!

I think I've already refuted that argument, Chris. Sometimes it's not possible to click the button, and you shouldn't have to click the button if you don't want to.

And yes, since the 60 seconds is hardcoded into the application, someone IS forcing 60 seconds on everybody.

http://ubuntuguide.net/disable-60-seconds-delay-notification-in-ubuntu910karmic

For 9.10 the link above has easy to follow instructions to get rid of the annoying 60 second timer.
If your like me you want your computer to do what you tell it to do not to ask you if your sure like the windows operating systems.
The next linux operating system will have an instruction manual that can be downloaded.
mur

Thank you thank you thank you!

Dear mur, thank you very much for that link! And yes, I want my Linux DO what I said, not asking me stupid questions like "really? really-really?".

I agree with those that say it is a useful feature that got removed.

I agree with those that say that the USER should be the one deciding how his user interface works.

Telling me what my user interface should like like is why I switched from windows.

Please don't start doing that in Gnome or ubuntu!

I have Ubuntu installed on a Home Theater PC (HTPC) / home file server but frequently have the video switched to a different component. I do not have a keyboard nearby at the time. I turn off the HTPC by pushing the power button on the front of the computer. This triggers the 60 second delay dialog. Before I go to bed at night I would expect to be able to push the power button and shutdown the computer. Instead, I hit the button and then have to wait to see what happens. Or, it makes me switch video input on the TV, then walk across to grab the wireless keyboard, then confirm that I really wanted to shutdown.

Computers are not always used by everyone in the same way. I do not see any harm in a configurable timeout value.

> The timeout is there mainly for people who select the action,
> and then forget to confirm the action and walk away.

The timeout as a feature has an extremely bad ratio of befuddleness vs. usefulness to the user.

When a feature is only marginally useful, and yet it is bound to confuse people every time they see it, then the feature needs to be either redesigned or left out. I would not mind at all seeing it left out, but if you want some suggestion as to how it could be improved, here:

a) Move the text below the buttons, make it tiny so that it looks like a footnote, and change it to "if you do nothing the machine will shut down in X seconds". This way, the text makes sense. As it is now, it doesn't.

b) Make the number of seconds auto-refresh to show the actual number of seconds remaining. As it stands now, the user is under the impression that the countdown is not counting (part of the befudleness I mentioned earlier) so 59 seconds later the dialog will still read "shutdown in 60 seconds" and then poof -- it shuts down in your face. That's terrible as far as user experience is concerned.